What began in 2007 as a way to communicate with supporters who helped me get to Africa has turned into a multi-continental story. Who knows where we'll go next!

Sunday, February 17, 2013

mountains in my blood

Somewhere between Lyon and Albertville, France

17 février 2013

Naked vineyards climb snow-covered slopes. Slopes that are
angular and rocky. Not soft and rounded like the mountains I come from.
Occasionally, a small, ancient castle—perhaps intact, perhaps in crumbling
disrepair after centuries of standing tall—slides into view, as though it’s no
big deal to be a castle, still claiming a vantage point that assures no
marauders can approach unseen. Roofs of all sizes are pitched steeply,
ostensibly to keep the heavy snow from collapsing them, but even pitched roofs
can eventually succumb to the heavy, wet whiteness, it seems. Along with and
sometimes on top of castles, broken roofs, too, have slid past, each scene in
view for only seconds—oh, look! now there’s a tall, narrow waterfall outside my window, gushing
melted snow—as the train zips on its merry way.

Albertville, France

Even if my weekend in Albertville (site of the 1992 winter
Olympics!) had been terrible—which it wasn’t—the weekend jaunt would still have
been worth it for the train ride alone. On my Friday exit from Aix to
Albertville, views were mostly muted and monochrome, but beautifully so, hinting
at the weather that had brought the previous night’s pillowy snowfall. As I
return south today, the sky is clear and bright, making the landscape’s every
color seem more fully itself: the white, white snow; the deep brown/black of disrobed
trees; a blue, blue sky; the warm stone-brown of still-lived-in old houses; multitudes
of shutters flaunting bright greens or light blues, cherry browns or apple reds.

And as I observe families of homes huddled together in the shadow of the rocky heights and wonder how the shadows and the beauty mark the lives inside those homes, my train takes me back to other places where I’ve wondered similar things.

Kalongo, Uganda

Suddenly, I’m back in Uganda, wondering about the people of
Kalongo who live in the austere but beautiful shadow of that strange,
rock-mountain that towers over their round, thatched roofs. And then I’m in
Cape Town, South Africa, where Table Mountain marks life for inquisitive
four-year-olds such as my cousin’s daughter and for residents eager to return
home to the security of their mountain’s austere but familiar footprint.

Cape Town, South Africa

Next, the snowy Alps and the cultivated slopes transport me
to the mountain villages I visited while trekking in India’s stretch of the
Himalayas. Especially that particularly heart-claiming village where the people
were so very friendly and their terraced farmland, so high up, was the picture
of order and hard work and healthy harvest. And from there I am back in the
Appalachians that birthed me, back in scenes I was reminded of in India.

Uttarakhand, India

Just as certain qualities of urban centers are a culture all
their own no matter what nationality marks them, so it is with communities tucked
into mountain crevices. I felt at home in Northern India partly because it reminded me
of home in Northeastern Tennessee, where a drive along curvy mountain roads showcases sheds
of patchwork tin and sometimes-dilapidated barns with partially-intact roofs,
clinging to life a little longer in solidarity with their older cousins in the
Alps.